They Call It Anxiety

Heavy, Heavy, Hangs Over My Head!

And I don't know why. Yes, I do: Next week I've got my annual checkup appointment, plus book club on Friday, and poetry critique group the week after that. But those don't worry me. It's just this general clinging feeling of something important left undone that bugs me nearly all the time.

The only unpaid bill is my UAB insurance, and that will take about a minute and a half to dispose of.

The basement? Well, doesn't 'most everybody have a basement that needs to be shipped to Timbuctoo?

Coughing, sneezing and crying while I'm working on the book? What else is new? By gosh, I hope this book affects everyone else who reads it the way it moves me. As many times as I've been through it, I still cry at the sad parts and laugh my head off when anyone says something funny or crazy. But Ramey says I have to change all the names. I knew I'd have to do that, but what can ever replace "Billie Jean"?

The feeling is almost like I've won the lottery and have to file a tax return. I wish.

One More Cthse. Trip

I shouldn't dread trips to the Courthouse in Birmingham. That's one of the friendliest places I've ever been, not to mention an attractive building to look at, with the park out back. Everybody you meet smiles and says hello or something, although I've never seen a sign that says you must. Anyway, I applied for the title to the Lincoln, but have to make another trip, because Jed signed the Tracker title "James D." instead of "James DeWitt." Costs us two bucks to get an application to change the signature, which we'll have to do before a notary. Then I'll have to go back again to get a tag for the Tracker.

It was a pleasant drive today, not too much traffic, and the weather cool and nice. Back in the City of Valor, I went to Wal Mart and BOUGHT A TELEPHONE! Plus some of the prettiest cotton fabric I've ever seen in my life, to make a table cover and valance for the kitchen.

Yesterday evening I went to the poetry reading at the Arts Council. We had so many good poems to enjoy, and everyone was kind about the ones I read. We had a good crowd--eight people is a "good crowd" for a poetry reading.

Ker-Blam!

Middle of the night, and it sounded like rocks hitting the roof. So I jumped up and grabbed the camera.
*
Jed went to Phoenix today. Hope he has a good trip--not all work.

Busting the Leaf Quilt

All this week I've been working on the unquilted parts of this. There are just a few more blocks at one end, and then the border. And then the binding. And then laundering and trying to remove 10 years of dirt, cat hair, and pricked-finger blood. I copied the design of this from an antique appliqued quilt shown in one of Susan's quilt books; I wanted to do it in patchwork instead of applique, so I designed the blocks, including the pieced leaf pattern of the white fill-in blocks.



Bond James Bond

 




REGRETS DEPARTMENT:











**********

The Last Lily to Open
Parts of the bouquet lasted for ten days.

A song, a poem and a book

The novel is tugging at me. I think I need to hang about 10,000 more words onto the end. Ramey says you have to keep fooling with it till you feel like it's perfect.

*

Poet for the day - Tennyson (from "Ulysses"):

"I am a part of all that I have met,
And all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world, whose margin fades
Forever and forever when I move.
....
". . .this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought."
*

A favorite song ("Little Moses" by the Carters - link at left):

"Out by the water so clear,
the ladies were winding their way,
when Pharaoh's little daughter stepped down to the waterr
to bathe in the cool of the day;

Before it was dark, she opened the ark
and found the little infant was there..."

"Music, when sweet voices die,

...vibrates in the memory..." - P.B. Shelley

I have been known to avow
that music is hateful to me;
now while I'm living, let me mend that great lie,
and tell it the way it should be;

When the dear human voices sing words that are true,
then listening and weeping are all I can do;
when I listen to music, nothing else can get through,
and you might as well talk to a tree.
*
Folks may think I'm mad as a loon
as unprovoked tears start to flow,
when all that I'm hearing is some plain old tune--
How can that move a grown person so?

Most any sweet ditty by Tammy Wynette
or Elvis or Twitty, or a Mozart quartet,
can start my tears raining and make me forget
all the grace and good manners I know.
*
If you must play music to me
when I'm trapped and unable to fly,
remember, I warned you, and just leave me be--
I hate it when folks see me cry;

When my heartstrings are jangled, the years roll away,
and I'm back in the fields where my friends used to play,
and my lost loves crowd around me, and whisper, and pray,
and it hurts when the sweet voices die.


by JRC - 3/19/11

Incroyable!!!

I woke up thinking in French. And considering how few French words I know, that didn't involve much thinking. Then this afternoon, I received this gorgeous bouquet (that's a French word!) from a secret admirer, congratulating one upon reaching the denouement of one's literary creation.

"Big Baby" is the book, not a newborn infant. Thank goodness.

It's the first day in a long time that I didn't wake up thinking about the book, so I guess it's really done.

Exhausted!

I finished the book today, at least until somebody tells me to rewrite it again. The ending is sort of truncated and abrupt, but I can always add more if necessary.

Some Call It One Thing

It amazes me how few adult people I meet who grew up in this town. I get right tired of spelling "Rowan" for people, and they always say, "Oh, Roe-an!" It wouldn't serve any purpose except my own venting, to tell them that people used to pronounce it "Ryan" or "Rhine." My friend Sandra H.B. still says "Ryan Road," but then she's almost as old as I am. About in the 1950s, people started saying "Rau-an," which is right, when some of the Rowans got tired of getting their names mixed up with the actual Ryans. I wonder how they like being called Roe-an by this gormless generation.

"Gormless" is a word that Grandma Hatfield in my book uses. When she said it, I had to look it up in the dictionary. Fortunately, Grandma with her archaisms doesn't last very long. The book, by the way, is at 70,000+ words and still growing. When it's done, I may have to get a wheelbarrow to haul it around in. That's a "wheel-bar," if you're even older than I am. But who is?

Making Haste Slowly

The past few days, I've only written a few hundred words on the book. But I've got some glitches worked out and sort of know where it's going.

Yesterday Ramey and I went to the Big Saver thrift store before the flood got well started. This morning the lot looked like a river, but it's draining off pretty fast. The basement is ankle-deep, though. I wonder if I ought to put the truck out on the driveway. Decisions, decisions.

During the writing hiatus, I've worked on the house while I thought about it, and I've got my bedroom cleaned out and most of the blankets, pillows and things laundered. If the story keeps going this slow, I might even clean out my closet. I took a load of stuff to the thrift store yesterday, but it didn't make much of a dent.

Jed went to Florida today. I hope he gets some time to enjoy it instead of having to work all the time.

I Hit a Snag

If I ever ever ever get this novel off my hands/mind, I'm going to make about a hundred quilts. Well, maybe one or two. While I'm doing that, I'll probably be wanting to write a novel. Doing something is how I get inspired to do something else.

I knew it--this contrary main character in the book is about to fall for the wrong man. If that happens, the droves of readers and fans that I don't have will hate and abandon me. He's a real bad 'un--hates dogs and other underdogs--or at least that's what he said. Smug and self-righteous and refuses to fight.

Sweet Music

I just threw in the possum picture because it's pretty. I guess this is what the singing possums looked like in Ramey's book.

*

My book gets longer all by itself. Every day or so, I get to thinking it's worthless, no story, nothing to it but some old stuff about the family. Then I sleep for a day or two, and it looks good again. I killed off my great-grandma and felt bad about that for a day or two. At any rate, it's over 60,000 words now, and I don't see the end. Vickie Covington said she knows a story is done when her main character turns around and looks at her. Big Baby hasn't looked me in the eye yet. If she marries the wrong man, then looks at me defiantly, I may have to start all over.

Just a Scene or Two

I didn't write much today. This thing reads more like a play, except it's too long. Mostly dialogue. Maybe I'll write a play someday.

I just watched the last few minutes of "Sunrise At Campobello" on TCM, and at one point I couldn't help crying. Mostly for our poor country, that has slid steadily downhill ever since Eisenhower, who had just enough mischief in his heart to turn into a Republican. Not that there aren't some good Republican politicians, or some good people who are Republican politicians. Or used to be. Theodore Roosevelt. Everett Dirksen. Lowell Weiker. I think there was another one, but the name escapes me.

Yesterday I read in The New Yorker something that Rusty Schweickart thought when he was walking in space and looking down at the Earth.

"It is so small and so fragile and such a precious little spot in that universe that you can block it out with your thumb. And you realize that on that small spot, that little blue-and-white thing, is everything that means anything to you--all of history and music and poetry and art and death and birth and love."

God, keep us.

Time for Another Fight

50,000 words. It won't be long, now.


If anybody ever tells you writing isn't hard work, send them to me and I'll thump them feebly on the head.


Good grief! Is it Saturday already?!!!

Wo' Out!

I just finished writing the first (and maybe the only) real love scene, and I 'm so tired I could sleep for a week. Hungry, too. Do I deserve a pizza? Certainly, go right ahead. Thank you, maybe I will.

I was supposed to do a lot of business today. Pay bills. Call about getting the car title for the Lincoln. Go buy a new telephone. Tow dat barge. Lift dat bale.

"Big Baby, I fink I'm going to be starved to deaf by ve time we get home."

Writing At a Gallop

So, today I reached 30,000+ words. About this time next month, I hope to have this thing ready to send off to somebody, will they, nil they.

It's hard to believe this is the 23rd of February. Specially hard to believe it's the year 2011, when I've been writing about the 1940s all day. All those old folks are dead and gone, except for a few of us who were little children or not born at the time, so I can change them around and make them do whatever I want them to.

On Sunday Ramey and I went to Odenville to Joe's critique group. His house is amazing. It's about a hundred years old, and he has built on rooms and porches but kept it looking old. He and Gail had decorated it with dozens of quilts and antiques and paintings. I asked if he did some of the building onto the house himself, and he said, "No. I write poems and make quilts." The meeting was good, and we're going to meet again next month.

Extinguished

The Only Thing Worse Than Being In Line Behind Someone Having Trouble Checking Out--Being One!

I am just about as embarrassed and aggravated as I have been in a long time. We all know how I hate to shop at Wal Mart, but I made a trip up there, found the right telephone I need to buy, almost filled the basket with curtain rods and spray paint, etc., then got a few groceries. When I finally got through a line to checkout, I found I had left my checkbook and everything at home. Next time I go to Wal Mart, I'll go in disguise. A wasted day--I could've written 5,000 words or so.

GRRR!!!!!

Feeling My Age but Acting OK, I Think

3,000 more words this morning. Then while I was eating a sandwich and a cookie, I lost my arrow and my keyboard and had to turn the computer off and on, etc.

One good thing about getting old is that you quit worrying so much about the future. I don't even dread getting dementia very much. While I worked at the Alzheimer's center, I heard so many funny stories from patients' families. One lady piled her dirty dishes on her kitchen counter, poured a whole box of detergent over them, then sprayed them with the hose from the sink. A gent with advanced AZD still scored 140 on an IQ test. Another patient, who came to the office with her family, followed me all around laughing like a hyena. If I get it, they can put me in a home, and I can go on having fun until the curtain closes. If they'll just let me have my books and computer or whatever toys I might like at the time.

*

About 5:30 p.m.: I read over all I've written from the beginning, and corrected as many typos as I noticed. I wasn't bored at all. I hope it will be interesting to anyone else who reads it.

The only other thing I've done today was put on some clothes and run the dishwasher.

QWERTYUIOP ASDFGHJKL ZXCVBNM

More than 20,000 words into this book. Sometimes I dream about typing. There are some boring places in the original draft, and every time I come to one of those, I try to throw in a fight. Maybe a murder, but nobody has committed one of those yet.

I'm so used to writing with Mo in my lap, I hardly even notice him any more.

Book club meeting is this afternoon, and critique group in Odenville Sunday afternoon. And I've got to go and buy a telephone to go with my new phone box.

My Favorite Quilt

It was in the 1970s, I guess, my mother was making quilts for my sister to sell to finance some project she had going. Jealous whelp that I was, I kept whining because Mama gave Susie so many quilts and never gave me one, so she finally gave me this quilt top.

I quilted it myself. This is the first quilt I ever stuck a needle into, and I love it the most of all. In the years after that, Mama gave me several quilts and tops, and this one, the Mexican Star, is worn and faded, but it's still my favorite.

Also, this is the style of quilt I like best--patchwork, hand-marked and hand-cut pieces, hand-sewn and imperfect. But I like appliqued quilts, and the modern machine-stitched, precision-cut works of art, too.

Around Christmas, I finally got the Una quilt bound and hung on the wall.

Someday I want to make a whole quilt like the top center block in the Una quilt. I don't know the name of the pattern or where I found it, but it looks pretty simple to reproduce.